PSEUDO-PHILOSOPHY ui 



It is of no use saying with Tyndall " on tracing the 

 line of hfe backwards, we see it approaching more and 

 more to what we call the purely physical condition "} It 

 really does nothing of the sort. An amoeba, a monera or 

 a bacterium is as much alive as a man. The protoplasm 

 of which it is made (as Huxley observes) is the same. 

 It shows no approximation whatever to the inorganic 

 world. Because it is small such is no proof that it ap- 

 proaches the composition of any mineral. This, surely, 

 is a most unscientific use of the imagination ! 



Lastly Mr. Herbert Spencer observes : " That the 

 forces exhibited in vital actions, vegetable and animal, 

 are similarly derived, is so obvious a deduction from the 

 facts of organic chemistry, that it will meet with ready 

 acceptance from readers acquainted with the facts." ^ As 

 an illustration, we may take his description of the assimi- 

 lation of carbon dioxide by plants. " To overcome the 

 powerful affinities which hold their elements together, 

 it requires the expenditure of force, and this force is 

 supplied by the sun". He does not seem to consider 

 how it is done by means of living, green-coloured proto- 

 plasm only. Sunlight supplies the energy, but proto- 

 plasm is the manufacturer. 



The preceding authors do not emphasise sufficiently 

 the significance of Natural Laws. Dr. Whewell in his 

 " Bridgewater Treatise " on " Astronomy and General 

 Physics" calls attention to the metaphorical use of the 

 term " law " in Nature. Contrasting it with Moral Law 

 he says : " The language of moral law is ' Man shall not 

 kill : the language of a Law of Nature is, a stone will fall 

 to the earth '." In other words, a moral law states what 

 a man always ought to be, a natural law, wha,t always is., 



^Belfast Address, p. 524. 

 2 First Principles, p. 271, 



